The Smiley Smile Message Board

I recently acquired the Dumb Angel Rarities vol 2 boot in flac, and while it sounds great there's a 16k cut-off on most of the tracks, which seems to indicate they are lossy/mp3-sourced material.

Is this a flac transcode or did the compiler of this series actually use mp3-sourced material to compile the disc?  Does this boot actually exist in a true lossless medium? 

I'm pretty sure it exists in a lossless medium.

I suppose there is just one set of FLAC's doing the rounds because I've come across them too. Looks like it's sourced from mp3, or maybe ATRAC compression from MD.

Anyway, they are available in lossless because I've checked a few of my old CDR's and they were pukka.

You should... um... upload that, son. 

I'll see what I can do. Unfortunately I could only find a couple of them... I was actually thinking of putting together a similar set from scratch using better, upgraded sources. I reckon this will take forever, though.

OK to be honest, at this point I am only looking for certain tracks on vol two. 

So, if you'd be willing to rip just those sole tracks for me, shoot me a PM. 

Thanks!  :)

If you got these from a certain site owned by a certain man who is pink, he has a really nasty habit of transcoding sh*t. Has it in lossless, "remasters" in MP3 (lololol), and then converts back to lossless. Someone really needs to stop him because it's really dirtying the pool.

Someone should help sonic. He is a really cool guy with a great blog.   ;D

Hearing that, I'm actually impressed that he took the Sirius/XM concert recording that I made, put it on his site, and left it "as-is"...lol. Files are 100% the same as my originals.

I'm probably even happier he didn't "remaster, de-hum and re-pitch" it. :)


(Good guy still)

Wouldn't doubt that he's nice considering all he's posted, but holy sh*t, I can't believe how many things I grabbed from there that turned out to actually be lossy. They've now spread to other sites, it's a really bad situation in terms of keeping these recordings properly preserved.

I agree. Nothing worse than polluting the pool.

(Except perhaps...some rogue, Japanese site taking the recording and selling it for an outrageous price. That happened, too.).

Hmmm, I did not. 

But that makes sense, I've seen other references to the boot having lossy artifacts.  Maybe thats exactly what he did, take a lossless source and remaster it to a mp3. 

So if that is the case, is his source the common Landlocked bootlegs we already have? 

This pink man?
(http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CCAsiwZj4Eo/UAdCvYwOFYI/AAAAAAAAEHs/BxQ-RlZPIlw/s640/Aaron+Paul+and+Krysten+Ritter+as+Jesse+Pinkman+and+Jane+Margolis+on+Breaking+Bad+S02E12+Phoenix.png)

What about this Pink Man?

(http://www.nashvillescene.com/binary/a523/mr_pink_jpg-magnum.jpg)

Flac snobs!!!!  :lol :lol

Pretty hilarious wanting to preserve music in the best quality that's out there, innit?

Yeah, that's were I got them as well. From the Pink Man. I guess all of the stuff he puts up is lossy, but it's a nice gesture. To make the stuff available, that is.

I've come across his "remasters" on other sites as well, so he really should stop doing whatever he does.

Exactly what tracks are you looking for? Maybe I have them on other boots...

A kind anonymous soul on this board already PM'd me and helped me out, thank you anyways.  :) 

soniclovenoize, I assume you're cooking up a new album for your blog (which im' a big fan of btw)? Any teasers?  ;D

Landlocked and A/C.  ;)

Makes me feel like dancing!  :banana

I have many many FLAC files and many Mp3 320's and 256's. To these ears, I can't tell the difference. And If I convert 'em to .wav, it dudn't make any difference anyway.

Convert it to a .wav ain't gonna improve the quality [that would be awesome though]

Hi Mikie,

I don't think it's so much a matter of whether or not someone can detect a difference with the naked ear (so to speak), but rather, the notion that the pool has now been forever polluted. That is, once people start transcoding things, who's to say this won't happen several times within the lineage of something and with god-knows-what bitrates or encoders. And, that will definitely be noticeable to the naked ear. Even more so, if someone takes it upon his or herself to "remaster" something, and throw it back into the circulating pool as well, now we're getting even further and further away from the original. All this is fine and dandy if someone simply wants to do it for their own personal use (IPods, etc), but all it takes is one person to convert it back to FLAC and upload it somewhere, with those files then being propagated like wildfire. There could be 15 transcodes within, even though the resulting file is being moved around as a "FLAC." It's like playing "telephone" with digital files....lol.

And that's the nice thing about having a virgin FLAC file with known and verifiable lineage (i.e. MD5 files, etc.). In the case of a ripped CD, it's a pristine clone of the original (assuming correct offsets, etc.). Or, in the case of a simple (preferably lossless) recording, an unscathed, pure original. It can stay that way forever. :)

I saw a demonstration online (I think it was on the Hoffman board)  where the audio information from an mp3 file was subtracted from a wav file of the same song, and what was left was extremely minimal and for the most part, inaudible.  Thoughts, anyone?

Did y'read anything posted above? The main interest in lossless is for preservation's sake. Also, it really depends on how the MP3 file is encoded, what kind of music you're dealing with, mastering etc. etc. Sometimes you lose a lot, even with optimum settings.

Preservation schmeservation!  If it sounds good to me, I'm cool!  :smokin

Besides, it's "preserved" at the original source, yes?

Did you read any of Dave's excellent post?

In the case of unreleased material, not always, and it becomes more and more difficult to track down a good source. "Remasters" of MP3s turn into "remasters" of MP3s, transcoded multiple times over etc. and are spread around to the point where you don't know what you're getting. In the case of retail CDs, I can see your indifference, but unreleased stuff or concert recordings should be treated differently.

There's also the case to be made for versatility. I used to collect everything in 320 (huuuge waste of space) to ensure I had everything in the "best" quality. If I wanted to edit these files for some reason or put together something cohesive from multiple sources, I'd have to transcode and lose more quality.

In the case of MP3 players, these huge 320kbps MP3s were a huge waste of space. Nowadays I can batch convert to V2 or V1, fit a fuckton more music on it and if I want to listen at home or in the car, I have CD quality or higher organized exactly how I want it. Cool. It's the best of both worlds and also forward thinking - hard drives and connections continue to improve and lossy formats are gonna be used minimally if at all in the future. I won't need to catch up much when that day comes.

Anyway, even aside from that, preservation and folks paying attention to this sort of thing is why you're not paying 20 dollars on iTunes for 96kbps DRM files. A lot of people used to think 96kbps sounded good until higher quality formats came along and they knew better.

BTW, Runners, would you (or anyone) happen to know, offhand, if the Pink Man's SOT uploads are all unscathed and as they originally were? I've never taken the time to do a frequency analysis or look/listen for other nasties. :)

TIA!

Dumb Angel as far as I'm aware was always lossless-sourced material. Get the Boot on the other hand...that's a fucking mess. Next to nothing on there is "lossless" yet it was put out as a CDR and shared as "FLAC". The 1980 Brian/Michael tracks (River Deep Mountain High and Why Don't They Let Us Fall In Love) were definitely SOURCED from a good quality copy of the tapes and then whomever leaked them decided to mp3 them to death. A bunch of the other tracks are similarly degraded by people looking to cover their asses and claim "oh, it's a DIFFERENT source!"

I'm with ya on that, Dave.  Complete agreement.

pretty sweet! Looking forward to it!  :)